Wednesday, April 02, 2008

How to Be A Professional Speaker (Part 2)

There Really A Market For Your Knowledge?

Public speaking has increased in demand all around the world. You do not have to be famous in terms of what your name is, but you have to have something unique or useful to offer. When this is seen by a company, organization or other group as being something worth listening to, the demand for you....rises.

One of the first keys to remember about being successful in the field of public speaking is to know what the buyer of your service is looking for.

And Just What Is The Buyer Looking For?

If you were to be hired to provide a product to a client, you would need to understand what needs that client has so that you can tailor your product to meet those needs and to therefore fulfill the buyer's demand.

In public speaking, you need to understand what the audience is looking for when giving a speech. Before you can do that, you must understand what the person or group that will hire you is looking for. Since they hire you, you have to be able to meet their goals.

In order to do this, you consider what the organization hiring you is looking for. In an interview with the organization, they are likely to want to gather facts about you.

Some of those facts include these qualifications.

Do you have a topic that is right for their audience?

The company hiring you is looking for you to accomplish some goal. This could be motivating their employees or it could be an educational goal. Regardless, do you meet that goal for them?

Do you have references to back you up?

The company wants to be sure that you have references, some type of qualification to be there doing what you are doing. You may be wondering where this is going to come from. It will be something addressed later in the series. For now, realize that you have to be a proven success to the company hiring you.

Not many meeting planners will put their reputation or job on the line by spending a fortune hiring a screw up.

Do you have an effective way to communicate your message?

Here, they want to be sure that you can drive home a winning presentation. Most want to have public speakers that are able to provide audio and visual demonstrations and materials to really bring out their point.

Do you offer the ability to customize your message?

If you are speaking to a group of employees, will you be able to customize your message to that company? Doing so can really be an effective way to bring in the information that the company is looking for. Many companies today are hiring professionals to do just that.

In most interviews, I confess I do all the asking. I want to make sure I deliver precisely what the meeting planner, the VP or the sales manager is going to want and need.

I can usually get through my questions in 45 minutes, and I take incredible notes.

Those notes get collated with other research I do about a company. And I rarely mention that I've researched a company. I'll tell you why next week!

Are you able to hold the attention of the audience?

In short, you do have to be somewhat of an entertainer in order to be successful. Organizations are looking for people that will stimulate thoughts and goals, but that will do it in a way that is enjoyable.

Few companies are cruel enough to hire you to bore their audience.

I've always enjoyed throwing very disarming or deadpan humor in my presentations. And that humor seems to work just as well if not better in Europe than the U.S.

Two years ago I got hired by an incredible "club" of multimillionaires and BILLIONAIRES to entertain them for 90 minutes. They didn't need education or a lesson in leadership. These were the masters of the world. They wanted me to make them LAUGH.

So I put together a presentation that was incredibly aggressive, as politically incorrect as I could humanly make it and I had about 2/3 of the audience laughing in minutes. Interesting: English was NOT a first language to anyone.

I had not been so nervous and frankly intimidated (yes it happens to me too!) in a decade...